O, the ghastly upturned faces gleaming whitely through the night! O, the heaps of mangled corses in that dim sepulchral light!
One by one the pale stars faded, and at length the morning broke; But not one of all the sleepers on that field of death awoke.
Slowly passed the golden hours of that long bright summer day, And upon that field of carnage still the dead unburied lay.
Lay there stark and cold, but pleading with a dumb, unceasing prayer, For a little dust to hide them from the staring sun and air.
But the foeman held possession of that hard-won battle-plain, In unholy wrath denying even burial to our slain.
Once again the night dropped round them,—night so holy and so calm That the moonbeams hushed the spirit, like the sound of prayer or psalm.
On a couch of trampled grasses, just apart from all the rest, Lay a fair young boy, with small hands meekly folded on his breast.
Death had touched him very gently, and he lay as if in sleep; Even his mother scarce had shuddered at that slumber calm and deep.
For a smile of wondrous sweetness lent a radiance to the face, And the hand of cunning sculptor could have added naught of grace
To the marble limbs so perfect in their passionless repose, Robbed of all save matchless purity by hard, unpitying foes.